Atomic Doctors

Why did the Manhattan Project scientists continue to work after acknowledging that neither Germany nor Japan had accomplished the creation of an atomic bomb? The life story of James F. Nolan, acclaimed gynecological oncologist who served the Manhattan Project and the subsequent nuclear tests at the Marshall Islands, is investigated in an attempt to answer this very question, interwoven with those of his physician and military colleagues at Los Alamos. As the grandson of the protagonist of the book, James L. Nolan, Jr. crafts a stunning narrative, in which personal accounts and family experiences are successfully amalgamated with academic rigor, situated within a large historical framework. Not overly defensive of his grandfather’s legacy, Atomic Doctors provides a convincing, though unsettling, answer to the above question while also offering counter-narratives that shed new insight into the dominant narrative of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: that is, the atomic bombing...

Art · Complicity · Conscience · Literature · Manhattan project · Narrative · Nuclear weapon · Political science · Situated · Diverse Historical and Scientific Studies · History · History of Science and Medicine · Law · Twentieth Century Scientific Developments